By AUBREY COHEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Published 10:41 am, Thursday, December 5, 2013

November brought a solid sign that the recent home sales surge is at least leveling off, with King County's first year-to-year sales drop in two and a half years. But inventory remains tight.

House sales fell 2.9 percent countywide from November 2012, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported Wednesday. Seattle sales were down 1.6 percent. This is primarily because we're comparing to months last year when sales were already up.

"It's pretty much a stable market," said Glenn Crellin, associate director of the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington.

Pending sales, which don't all close, but can be the best indicator of recent activity, were down 0.2 percent countywide but up 11 percent in Seattle.

Asked about the rise in Seattle, Crellin said: "Location continues to matter, and it is the central neighborhoods that really have been carrying the bulk of the load of the recovering market."

The county continued to have just over two months worth of houses for sale at the current sales page (Seattle stayed just above 1.5 months of inventory). That's well below the four to six months of inventory considered balanced between buyers and sellers.

"That's still a very short inventory," Crellin said.

In a listing service news release, Mike Gain, CEO and president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Northwest Real Estate in Seattle, said: "The lack of inventory is holding sales down."

The median price of a house that sold in November was $414,000, which was up 7.5 percent from a year earlier but down 2.8 percent from October (in line with typical seasonal variation). The price in Seattle was $455,000, up 7.1 percent from a year earlier but down 4.3 percent from October.

Those price increases are down from recent double-digit rises, but "need to stabilize a little more than that," Crellin said. "The market wasn't going to be able to sustain those rapid rates of price appreciation."

In the listing service news release, Windermere Real Estate President OB Jacobi agreed, saying: "As we saw in years past, continual double-digit price appreciation leads to boom and bust cycles that none of us want to relive."